


Witness

by fraternite



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-13 13:10:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10514421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fraternite/pseuds/fraternite
Summary: The triumvirate gets in way, way over their heads, but it’s all right-–Courfeyrac’s got this.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [estelraca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/estelraca/gifts).



> Please excuse the fact that the real-world details of this story are often vague, and when they aren't they don't actually make much sense? Let's pretend it's an intentional stylistic thing. I don't know what I'm doing I wrote the entire thing in about 5 hours idk.
> 
> Strong content warning for police brutality.

It’s a strange feeling, watching yourself from outside your body.  Looking down on the top of his own head, Courfeyrac is torn between a deep existential discomfort at the vantage point and a hot rush of shame at the random tuft of hair standing straight up on the back of his head.  Why did no one tell him?

Glancing to his left and his right, he can see Enjolras and Combeferre struggling with the same difficulties (or at least, the first one; Combeferre keeps his hair cut in a short fade, and Enjolras, damn him, always has perfect hair all the way around despite never having touched gel in his life).  Combeferre’s fingers are moving, clicking a nonexistent pen in a nervous habit of his.  Enjolras is just staring, more like a statue than ever, as his body shouts into a micophone below his hovering feet.

“Why are we seeing this?” Combeferre wonders aloud.  “Is this real, are we hallucinating, are we ghosts, Courf, what the hell is happening?”

Courfeyrac tries to drape an arm over Combeferre’s shoulders and is thwarted both by Combeferre’s height and by the fact that their “bodies” are both as sturdy as mist.  His arm goes right through his friend, though to his relief it doesn’t  _ feel _ like anything.  He stumbles, but thankfully doesn’t fall--he’s not sure how far down he’d go.

“I think it’s real,” he says.  “Everything looks how I remember it.”

“It’s how I remember too,” Combeferre says.  He drifts away from Courfeyrac--Courfeyrac’s not exactly sure how he’s moving--and squints up at the sky.  “So maybe that’s it--this is a memory that’s replaying in my brain as I--  Maybe this is just all in my head.”

“I wish we could  _ hear _ what’s going on--you can’t hear anything either, right?”

“Nothing except you talking.”

Courfeyrac is starting to be unnerved by Enjolras’s silence.  He turns toward his still-unmoving friend, mouth open to call out to him, but something he definitely  _ doesn’t _ remember catches his eye.

“Holy shit holy  _ shit!” _ he yelps.  “The police!”  He flails inarticulately toward the east side of the square; from their vatage point high above the crowd, he can see a swarm of figures in riot gear assembling in a side street.  The sun flashes off clear shields and helmet visors.

“They must have been there the whole time,” Courfeyrac says sickly.  “I didn’t realize.”

“Maybe,” Combeferre says.  “Or maybe this is just a very vivid and disturbing dream.”

“I’m going to drop the clipboard,” Enjolras says quietly.

“Huh?”

He motions with his incoporeal chin.  “When Monae starts talking.  I trip on the extension cord and drop the clipboard.”  Even as he says it, the microphone below changes hands and the real (lower?  other?) Enjolras fades to the back of the stage as a large black woman in a pink headscarf starts talking soundlessly to the crowd.  And sure enough, his foot catches on one of the cords strung across the stage and he stumbles backward, the clipboard falling to the ground.

“I didn’t see that, when we--the first time around,” Courfeyrac says.  “So whatever’s going on, it’s not just a replay of my memories.”

“That’s enough for you?” Combeferre asks.  “One detail that your conscious mind doesn’t remember?  The information in our subconscious is thousands of times more extensive than the information we’re aware of remembering--and even if there were gaps in our memories, our brains would just fill them in with plausible details.  The clipboard thing doesn’t prove anything.”

“It doesn’t  _ feel _ like a memory, Ferre,” Enjolras observes.  “Or like a dream.  Not to me.  How does it feel to you?”

Combeferre hesitates for a minute, his mouth open to form a reply, then he sighs.  “It feels real,” he admits.  “I . . . I wish it wasn’t.  Once was enough for me.”

“Courf?” Enjolras asks.  Courfeyrac ignores him, patting vainly at Combeferre’s spectral form.

“I know,” he says.  “It was--well, it sucked.  A lot more than I thought it would, actually.  But it’s over now.”

Combeferre shakes his head.  “Not if I have to watch it again.”

“Maybe . . . maybe it won’t be so bad, seeing it from the outside,” Courfeyrac tries.  “Maybe that’ll make everything sort of--fall into perspective.”

“Courf,” Enjolras says again, more intensely than before.  “Does it feel real to you?”

“I don’t know, maybe,” Courfeyrac says, a little impatient.  “Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

Grabbed by the barely-controlled urgency in Enjolras’s voice, Courfeyrac turns around.  Enjolras’s eyes are fixed on him, his hands trembling slightly.  Courfeyrac pauses, considering the vibrance of the colors in the street below, noticing the tiny details--the tangle of cords on the stage, the puff of Enjolras’s breath in the cold air, the way the frozen ground of the park had been trodden up into mud.

“‘I think it’s real,” he says softly.  “Why, Enj?”

“If it’s real, then we can see what happens.”  Enjolras’s voice catches.  “After we die.  We can see if the protest was a success, how the news stations covered it--we can see if we made a difference.”

 

And so they watch.

They see the speeches, the cheering crowd, the silently-chanted slogans.  They see Bahorel howling in glee and Bossuet and Joly clinging to each other in the cold, Joly’s cheeks flushed with excitement.  They see the man in the drab jacket hanging around on the margins of the protest, his hands jammed in his pockets--and they see the moment when he glances around quickly, pulls something from his jacket, flings it into the crowd, and takes off at a run.  And then an explosion blasts open the world.

The police appear out of nowhere--or so they’d thought--and seemingly unaware that the blast wasn’t caused by the protesters themselves.  Armed with tazers and tear gas and batons, they break through the already ravaged crowd like a battering ram.

It’s hard for Courfeyrac to watch it.  He  _ knows _ it was bad, and he has very vivid snapshots in his head of single clarified moments within in the violence--but even his memories didn’t capture just how much blood there was.  When he sees his real body get tazed, the very teeth of his current body ache in sympathy.  He watches a baton blow to his face that he remembers like a thunderclap, then several steel-toed kicks that he doesn’t remember at all, and then--somehow--he  _ knows _ .

He tears his eyes away from the police officers trambling over his lifeless body to look for his friends.  It’s hard to locate them; everyone in the square seems to have become the same blood-streaked, frantic person.  He watches Bossuet and Joly drag a stumbling Jehan across the street, weaving through the chaotic traffic.  He sees Enjolras lying by the smoking, twisted wreckage of the stage, his face and body flayed by shrapnel.  He sees Bahorel facedown in the mud, his hands cuffed behind his back and a heavy boot on the back of his neck, and he prays that his friend has the good sense--for once!--not to fight back.  He see Combeferre reach out a hand to steady a limping police officer and get gunned down by his anxious, trigger-happy partner.  

Red lights are flashing, and then there’s people in different uniforms, running and pushing and coughing in the smoke, and people are being loaded into vans (some of them with hands bound behind their backs; some strapped to stretchers; some with plastic bags zipped over their heads).  The sky overhead is dark--or is that just the smoke?--and all Courfeyrac can see is flashes of strangers’ faces in the headlights.  He’s lost sight of his body, lost any sense of the narrative.

After a while, it’s too much, and he stops seeing any of it.

And then it’s over.  It’s over, and the block is roped in with fluttering yellow plastic tape, and the ground is empty of everything but trampled mud and discarded signs.  They’re a little bit faded, and it’s only when he notices that that Courfeyrac realizes he saw the world grow dark and then light again two or three times before he snapped out of his haze.

Enjolras is over on the far side of the square, crouching over something in the street.  Courfeyrac drifts down to join him and sees him fruitlessly trying again and again to turn the page of a mud-stained newspaper with hands that go right through the pages.  “GOVERNOR TO SIGN LITMUS LAW,” the headline reads, over a photo of three white men in expensive suits shaking hands in front of the courthouse, and Courfeyrac’s stomach sinks.

“It didn’t change anything,” Enjolras mutters.  “All of that--we--nothing changed.  It made no difference.”

Courfeyrac nudges a bit closer to him, swallowing the ache welling up in his own throat.  “Come on, let’s go find Combeferre.”

Combeferre has ended up in the far corner of the square, tucked behind the dumpsters in back of the Catholic church.  He’s doubled up, heaving even though his ghost body doesn’t have a real stomach, or anything to bring up.  It takes him several minutes to register Courfeyrac and Enjolras’s presence, and when he finally stops retching and raises his head, he looks absolutely wrecked.

“Can we get out of here?” he whispers.

“Of course,” Courfeyrac murmurs.  He shakily stands, and they each wrap an arm around him, even though they can’t  _ really _ touch him, as they walk out of the square.

 

And suddenly, they’re there again--floating above the crowd, watching Enjolras shout soundlessly into the microphone.  The sun is just beginning to sink, and the trees are still glittery with frost, and it’s a perfect Sunday afternoon that Courfeyrac  _ knows _ is going to become a nightmare in just a few moments.

He and Enjolras share a bewildered look, each checking that the other is just as confused as he is.  

Combeferre is shuddering, backing away.  “I don’t want to see it again,” he says, shaking his head.  “I can’t do it.”

“Sure,” Enjolras says soothingly.  “Let’s go.  It’s okay, we can get away before--before anything happens.”  They leave the crowd behind, moving toward the sandwich shop (he had a turkey meatball with pickles on rye, Courfeyrac remembers suddenly, and Grantaire laughed at his weird order).  

They have plenty of time, he tells himself.  They’ll get away before the bad stuff, and they’ll find a quiet place to rest, and they’ll figure out what the fuck is going on.  It’ll be okay.  He’s on his third time through the litany when he realizes he’s been muttering it out loud.  He hesitates for a second, then goes on as he’s been.

But he can’t produce any words when the world diappears underneath his feet and he finds himself hovering again above his own head, the gesture of his mittened hands as he motions Marius closer toward the stage discomfitingly familiar now.  They’re back at the beginning again.

“No,” Combeferre mutters.  “No, no, nonononono. . .”  His voice climbs in hysteria with every word.

“It’s okay,” Enjolras says desperately.  “We still have time.  We--”

They run away again, and again find themselves catapulted back in time to where they started.  They try another direction, and still the same thing: The moment their feet step past the bound of the square, they go back to the beginning.

It’s something like the tenth time it’s happened when Enjolras finally admits it.  “We’re trapped.”  

Courfeyrac’s never heard him sound so defeated before.

Combeferre swallows grimly.  “Let’s get as far away as we can . . . please?” he mutters.  

Trial and error teaches them the absolute farthest they can get away from the park before whatever has a hold on them snaps them right back to the beginning of the rally, and they wait there, huddled together.  Backs to the chaos, they try not to see what’s happening to the people around them, try not to notice the hunched figures running past them.

At long last, it’s over, and the sky grows dark, and then light again, and they dare to pick their way through the square, exploring the wreckage.  No bodies have been left behind, but they find Feuilly’s sign, with its precise lettering in three languages, and a knit cap that Courfeyrac could  _ swear _ belongs to Musichetta.  They talk about what it means, but of course it’s impossible to draw conclusions based on muddy scrap of fabric and a trampled, abandoned sign.  News crews come by every few hours to pan their cameras over the site of the disaster and talk earnestly into microphones before bundling back into their vans and speeding away to the next story.

Day becomes night again, and then the sun rises and they watch city employees come through in reflective vests to pick up all the discarded signs and to spray the blood from the fountain steps.  The caution tape comes down and the park goes back to looking eerily like it did before.  

Very few people visit.  One or two bring flowers, set them furtively on the rim of the fountain, then walk quickly away as if they were a different person.  It’s nobody Courfeyrac knows.  They’ve tried talking to them, tried touching them, tried every way of interacting they can think of.  Nothing has any effect.

“We’re ghosts.”  Combeferre is the one who finally says it, breaking the silence that’s been wrapped around them for days.

Enjolras nods, numbly.  

“Aren’t ghosts supposed to . . . do something?” Courfeyrac asks.  “Like, they’re supposed to be hanging around to get revenge on someone, or because there’s something they still wanted, aren’t they?”

_ We wanted the world to change. _ Nobody’s brave enough to say it out loud.  Because if it’s true, they’re probably trapped here forever.

 

More days pass.  The trees bud; a school field trip stops in the park to eat lunch, scattered over the wide paved area and the public benches around the fountain.  The city digs up the sewer pipes in front of the bank and traffic is slowed to a crawl for three weeks, the air heavy with exhaust.  A massive thunderstorm brings down the huge pine tree in the northwest corner of the park, crushing the homeless man who was huddled on the bench underneath.  No one brings flowers afterward.

It’s Enjolras who finally cracks.  It’s a completely uneventful day, a day like any other, and perhaps that’s what finally pushes him to his feet, shaking his head as if already denying any argument.

“I can’t do it anymore,” he says simply.  “Anything is better than this.  I’m sorry.”

And he turns around, strides down the street toward the river, and blinks out of existence.

Courfeyrac and Combeferre are left alone, staring at each other.

“Fuck,” Courfeyrac whispers.  “Fuck, shit, fuck,  _ fuck _ .”  

Without Enjolras, what was an unbearable and meaningless punishment a moment ago has become a thousand times more empty and horrible--especially since he knows the last thing Combeferre wants to follow Enjolras back into that night of blood and terror.  He’s going to have to choose between them, and it quite possibly might kill him.  He looks helplessly at Combeferre.

“Ferre,” he pleads.  “We can’t.”

Combeferre looks like he’s going to be sick, but he nods.  “Of course not.”  He reaches out a hand to Courfeyrac (even though they can’t feel each other, the pretense of holding hands gives a tiny shred of comfort).

When they flicker back into the night they’ve spent months getting away from, Enjolras is just raising his head to look at himself, squaring his shoulders like he’s getting ready for a fight.  He takes a step backward as Courfeyrac and Combeferre appear.

“You weren’t supposed to--”

“You know we couldn’t make you come back here alone,” Courfeyrac says.

Enjolras smiles.  “Thank you.”

And they’re at his side as he tries to shout warnings to their living selves, as he tries to be seen by the police, as he tries all the hundreds of impossible things they’ve already tried a thousand times.  They’re there when he finally gives up, after another hundred cycles of vainly trying to make  _ any _ difference in the turn of events, and falls to his knees, his shoulders shaking with tears his nonexistent body isn’t able to shed.

“Why are we here?” he asks brokenly.  “What’s the point?”

“I don’t know,” Courfeyrac has to answer.

Combeferre says nothing, just stands still behind Enjolras, carefully not looking at the crowd where his body is about to be shot point-blank three times.

It’s the heaviest thing in the world when Enjolras finally says, “I guess we should . . . start again.  I’m sorry.”

Enjolras and Combeferre settle down on the ground there on the far side of the fountain, where they won’t have to see themselves die again, where they will be able to ride out most of the chaos without having to relive it again.  Courfeyrac is about to plop down beside them, but something stops him.  

For the first time in a long time, he allows himself to remember, really remember, what it was like to die in that frantic crowd.  To feel the blows from the police officers and to fall, dizzy with pain and fear, under so many trampling feet.  To be dying, and to be so alone.

He doesn’t want himself--or them--to have to die alone again.

_ Just one more time, _ he tells himself.   _ I can handle it one more time. _  He turns back toward the protest, pushing himself up to hover in the air above the crowd one last time, looking down on himself and his friends from above their heads.  For just a moment, he sees them all together again, excited and angry and full of hope, and despite everything, he is  _ so proud  _ of them.  Then the smuggled-in bomb goes off, and almost at the same time the police pour into the square, and everything is frightening and confusing and awful.  But for the sake of his still-living self and his friends, Courfeyrac watches their deaths one last time.

And at last, he understands.

 

He’s giddy with excitement as he returns to Enjolras and Combeferre, who are still crouched on the edge of the square, huddled close together, Combeferre’s arm up to shield his eyes from the flashing emergency vehicle lights.

Courfeyrac skirts around an EMT he could have just run right through and tumbles to the ground by his friends.

“We have to go back another time,” he pants, breathless even though he doesn’t actually breathe.  “There’s something you need to see.”

“We’ve seen everything.  I don’t  _ want _ to see it again.”

“You  _ haven’t _ ,” Courfeyrac insists.  “Please, trust me.  Come on.”

Combeferre, shaking, sets his jaw.  “We’ve already done it a hundred times.  Why do it once more.  Just tell us what it is; that’ll be good enough.”

“No,” Courfeyrac says.  “You have to see it.”  He hesitates just for a moment, then walks out into street--and past the boundary of their prison.

For one sickening minute, he’s afraid they won’t follow him--but of course, they do.  And despite the haunted look in Combeferre’s eyes and the trembling of Enjolras’s hands, they go where he leads them, and they look at what he wants them to see.

And so they see the way Enjolras’s eyes widen when he sees the bomber--a few seconds before anyone else does.  They see his lips move with a shouted warning, and they see Feuilly understand.

And that split second gives him the chance to shove Gavroche off the stage.

Feuilly lands on top of Gavroche, shielding him with his body as the homemade bomb tears through hastily-assembled plywood and someone’s cousin’s portable dance floor.  He comes up unsteady and coughing, but unharmed enough to be able to yank Gavroche to his feet and drag the slightly shell-shocked kid away before the police get there.  Together, they stumble up the stairs of the Catholic church.  Feuilly leans against the door, one hand clamped to his side, and pounds on the door with his other fist.

And the heavy wooden door opens, just a crack, and a hand beckons them quickly inside.

Over on the wreckage of the platform, Enjolras’s body lies unmoving but still bleeding, shredded by the bomb--but his spirit gazes at the door, his eyes bright with impossible tears.

Quietly, Courfeyrac beckons them back to the fountain.  They pass effortlessly through the turmoil.  They see Courfeyrac’s body, already lying small and broken in the frozen mud.  Courfeyrac pulls them onward, to a tall black man, his scarf pulled up over his face agains the smoke, who kneels by a wounded woman, pressing his wadded-up hat against her arm.

Courfeyrac is so, so proud of Combeferre as he delivers the woman into the hands of her friends and then turns to go back toward the blast, already scanning the crowd for the next person to help.  He’s even prouder as he watches his friend’s spirit recognize the moment before him and flinch--and then not look away.

A police officer is staggering out of the smoke, heavily favoring his left foot.  Combeferre starts toward him, a hand outstretched to offer him something to lean on.  The man’s buddy, panicking, shouts a silent warning, which has barely left his mouth when the bullets from his gun tear through Combeferre’s body.  It’s over in an instant, and he crumples to the ground.

Only it’s not over.  As they watch, the limping cop, his face stricken, turns on his fellow officer, snatching the gun away from him and shoving him toward the edge of the crowd.  He falls to his knees at Combeferre’s side, feeling for a pulse.  When he’s unsuccessful, he jumps back to his feet and turns around, almost mirroring exactly Combeferre’s movements a moment before as he looks for someone else who needs help.

For the next four hours, they watch this man work tirelessly to make help the wounded to medical care and make sure the rest of the area is safe.  They watch him deescalate several near-brawls and react in time to stop other officers’ hands from going to their guns.  They watch him take a punch in the face from a frightened protester and shake it off, calmly guiding the man to the sidelines where he can cool down and recover himself.

And in the moments when weariness and frustration seem ready to overtake him, they watch him stop for a moment and glance the spot in the middle of the park where the three of them know Combeferre’s blood is still warm on the earth.

And then, finally, it’s over.

The police are still surrounding the scene, putting up the tape that once marked the boundary of Combeferre, Enjolras, and Courfeyrac’s prison; people are still taking pictures of blast marks and tagging pieces of evidence.  But the smoke has cleared and the fighting is done, and night is settling over the city.

Combeferre is the first to speak.  “Was it worth it, do you think?”

“Feuilly is alive,” Enjolras says, his voice husky with emotion.  “Gavroche is alive.  For me, that’s worth it.”

“Even if you didn’t change the whole world,” Courfeyrac ventures, “you changed a part of it.”

“You?” Combeferre asks, turning toward Courfeyrac.  “Don’t you mean we?  What about you; what didn’t we see?”

Courfeyrac shrugs.  “Nothing.  I . . . I just died.  It was nothing heroic or inspiring or anything.  I got kicked in the face, and then I died.  It’s okay, I don’t need it to be anything else.”

Enjolras shakes his head.  “But if you hadn’t been here, we never would’ve seen what we just saw.  Combeferre and I would’ve been trapped here forever.”

“Lost,” Combeferre echoes.

“Well then,” Courfeyrac says, feeling the tiniest smile--for the first time in what feels like years--creep across his face.  “Shall we?”

“Let’s go,” Enjolras says.

Combeferre takes his left arm, and Enjolras takes his right, and arm in arm, they walk out of the park, leaving the flashing police lights behind them.  They walk past the sub shop, past the church, past the fountain.  And then, just as Courfeyrac knew they would, they walk past the caution tape and out, into the city and into the world. 


End file.
